The price of the future, part II

I was just trying to trace the alleged connection between Nintendo and the stereoscopic technology company ´Virtual Vision´ (a subsidiary of Emagin, who have in turn been rumoured to work with Nintendo before). I didn´t find any hard evidence concerning this topic, but I came across an interesting quote about costs, though. Lots of people seem to think that a technology like AR (with high-end gadgets in the five figures price range) could never be mass-marketed as a videogame tool. But it´s possible and it´s been done before. Remember the Nintendo Power Glove? Wikipedia describes it like this:

The Power Glove is a controller accessory for the Nintendo Entertainment System made by Mattel. This controller was unique in the fact that it was a glove instead of the normal controller. On the glove it included a set of controls like a normal controller. It also included a program button and buttons labeled 0-9. A person would hit the program button and a numbered button to do various things (such as increase or decrease the firing rate of the A and B buttons). Along with the controller, someone could move their hand in various movements to control the character on-screen. It was based on the patented technology of the VPL Dataglove, but with many modifications that allowed it to be used with a slow hardware and sold at an affordable price.

But what do you think that gadget cost as a high-end prototype? Well, I found the info on that. The following quote is from a Business Week article, entitled VIRTUAL REALITY - How a Computer-Generated World Could Change the Real World. It was published on October 5, 1992.

Entertainment is one of the first beneficiaries. Nintendo Co.'s $99 Powerglove, a simpler version of VPL's $ 8,800 Dataglove, lets video-game wizards play with hand gestures and has already helped spawn a host of VR-like video games.

The cost discrepancy between the professional tool and its mass-market videogame equivalent is staggering: the latter is only a little over 1% of the price of the former. And remember that there´s still a profit margin in there. This example helps us to understand that cutting edge technology can easily be brought down to an acceptable price, given reduced quality. This ties in with what Rick Shie, POC´s senior vice president told me some weeks ago. The costly ingredient of stereoscopic 3D projection are the projectors, he said. But, he had added, it was all down to what quality output the client desired.